It’s been an interesting last several days for those of us interested in Internet freedoms, with two Google-centered situations in the news with potentially large implications for that sort of thing.

The first is, as reported last week, the Justice Department’s attempts to force Google to turn over a database of search records, as part of its ongoing efforts to prove that the Child Online Protection Act is necessary. DOJ is insisting that the records won’t be used to tie the search results to any one user, but the folks at EFF are not convinced. Even the searches themselves, they say, raise privacy issues. The Mercury News has a nice write-up of the situation and the New York Times has an interesting piece today on how the idea that government lawyers might be having a sneaky-peek at our search records might already be affecting how we Google.

And the second is Google’s decision yesterday to release a new Chinese version that restricts certain search results, including links to blogs. Former CNN Asia bureau chief-cum-blogger Rebecca McKinnon, who of course knows far more about this part of the world than I do, says that anyone providing Internet services to China is “committing evil.” Perhaps. But I think that this move might actually open up more of the web to more Chinese. The Chinese government has regularly blocked Google.com, so even a limited but accessible Google China might be a step forward. And I have some amount of faith that Chinese hackers -- aided by sympathetic souls around the world -- will be able to figure out ways to work around the restrictions.

In my mind, both speak to the essential question when it comes to the Internet -- is there any chance that it might manage to keep up its act as as sort of free and unfettered “place apart” in the years to come, or are these two cases signs that it is trending toward becoming just as regulated as our offline spaces are? We shall see.